The field of computed radiography (CR) is well known in the medical area. With CR, a storage phosphor plate has a radiographic image formed thereon by exposing an object (such as a body part), to x-rays. The exposed storage phosphor plate is then provided to a reader/scanner where the plate is stimulated with radiation if one light frequency to email a radiation image of another light frequency. The emitted image is captured, converted to a digital radiograph I image, and stored, displayed or otherwise used.
Scanners of x-ray exposed storage phosphor plates can perform their function on a flat-bed or an external surface of a rotating drum. Such radiation image readout apparatus are known, for example, refer to U.S. Pat. No. 4,886,968 (Ohnishi), U.S. Pat. No. 5,396,081 (Ogura), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,635,728 (Cantu), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,791,101 (Koren).
Optical systems for such scanning apparatus are known. For example, JP Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei 6-160311 is directed to a radiation image reading apparatus. U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,180 (Juergensen) is directed to a light pick-up device. U.S. Pat. No. 5,399,877 (Carter) is directed to a radiation sensitive area detection device and method. U.S. Pat. No. 5,598,008 (Livoni) is directed to a wavelength selective light collector system.
While such systems may have achieved certain degrees of success in their particular applications, there is a for an optical system of a scanning apparatus which provides improved light collection efficiency, is compact in size, and includes a reduced number of elements.
There is needed an optical system for scanning storage phosphor plates which provides an increase in accuracy and quality.